Today's Halloween is first and foremost a European and American celebration. But unlike many of the holidays celebrated in Western civilization that can be traced to Afrika, Kemet in particular (by either being a Greek or Roman festival borrowed from Kemet), Halloween's Afrikan roots are less traceable, but exist nevertheless. It is an example of an Afrikan survival as will shall see. In fact, its original purpose was the most basic of Afrikan spiritual system--the veneration of the ancestors. Although the phrase All Hallows' is found in Old English (ealra hālgena mæssedæg, mass-day of all saints), All Hallows' Eve is itself not seen until 1556. The word Halloween or Hallowe'en dates to about 1745, and is derived from the Scottish term for All Hallows' Eve (the evening before All Hallows' Day). In Scots, the word eve is even, and this is contracted to e'en or een, which in time evolved into the word Halloween. However, the actual celebration was based on the Celtic Samhain celebration, which was the traditional Celtic New Year, and at the same time a festival dedicated to the ancestors, or the “dead,” as the West likes to say. According to some scholars, All Hallows' Eve is a Christianized feast that has two roots: western European harvest festivals, and the Celtic Samhain. Other historians have attempted to give the celebration a Roman pedigree, claiming its origins lie in the Roman feast of Pomona, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia. These argument are less tenable. But while the argument for a harvest festival connection is plausible, the connection between Halloween and the Celtic festival of Samhain," is undeniable. In the early centuries of the first millennium A.D., before Christian missionaries such as St. Patrick and St. Columcille converted the Celts to Christianity, they practiced an elaborate religion through their priestly caste, the Druids. Most religious scholars agree that the word Samhain (pronounced "sow-en") comes from the Gaelic “Samhuin” for "summer's end," marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. Samhain was the first and most important of the four quarter days in the medieval Gaelic calendar and was celebrated in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. It was held on or about October 31 – November 1 and kindred festivals were held at the same time of year by the various Celtic groups in Britannia. It was seen as a liminal period when spirits could more easily enter into the “human” realm. The souls of thankful kin could return to bestow blessings just as easily as that of a murdered person could return to wreak revenge. As a result of this reality, the festival had a certain ambivalence; while the spirits of the dead were welcomed (even setting a plate for them at the Dumb Supper), the unwelcome spirits were feared and propitiated to ward them off. The Druidism or the religion of the ancient Celts believed that on their New Year's Eve, all of the people who died in the past year would rise up and search for the passageway to the netherworld. On this night the passageway or "veil" between both worlds was it's thinnest. Lord Samhain would roam the earth in search of these souls to capture them and take them to his world of darkness. The priest circled the traditional Samhain bonfire with the skulls of their ancestors in order to protect the people from malevolent souls that night, while the people put lights in their windows to help the dead find their way into the netherworld. In 609, the Roman Church introduced All Saints (Hallows) day as a day dedicated to remembering the faithful departed believers (dead), which included saints (hallows) and Christian martyrs. The mass on All Saints’ Day was called Allhallowmas – the mass of all those who are hallowed or venerated. The new holiday became a celebration to honor any saint who did not already have a specific day already dedicated to them—hence all (other) saints were collectively recognized on this day. It was originally observed on May 13 until in 835, at the behest of Pope Gregory IV, it was deliberately switched to November 1, the same day as Samhain. This was a common practice of the church to celebrate one of their holidays on the same day as an established pagan holiday, superimposing Catholic symbolism and rites onto the existing celebration, in an effort to replace it. (In 601 A.D. Pope Gregory I issued a now famous edict to his missionaries concerning the native beliefs and customs of the peoples he sought to convert. Rather than try to obliterate native peoples' customs and beliefs, the pope instructed his missionaries to use them: if a group of people worshiped a tree, rather than cut it down, he advised them to consecrate it to Christ and allow its continued worship. Halloween is just another example of this, just as Easter and Christmas had been earlier examples of.) The contemporary celebration of Halloween is filled with the symbolism of the Samhain's ancestor worship. For example, the jack-o-lantern, the wearing of costumes, "trick or treating" or "trunk or treating," and the association of the night with “evil” are all elements of the Samhain.An Afrikan presence existed among the Celts, and we know this because the Roman historian Tacitus informs us that many of the Celts were as “dark as Ethiopians.” Moreover, we also see it in their obvious ancestral veneration, as reflected in Samhain. One of our problems is in trying to get a true and impartial understanding of the Samhain and Druidism in general. We get a distorted picture of the pre-Christian Celts since Christian writers customarily demonized any and every thing considered paganism. While missionaries identified their All Saints Day with Samhain, they branded the earlier religion's spiritual beings as evil, associating them with the Christian Devil and his minions. The Druids were considered evil worshipers of devilish or demonic gods and spirits and the Celtic netherworld inevitably became identified with the Christian Hell. Much of what we read about the Celts and Druidism may be typical Christian propaganda. On the other hand, we may also be witnessing Britannia as a zone of confluence. According to Diop, this was an area of the world where the two cradles met producing a hybrid culture, with the southern cradle culture usually giving way to the more violence-prone northern cradle culture. If Druidism, as I have argued in an earlier blog was a vestige of Afrikan traditional spiritually, then we can assume it was besieged by the Roman Church and the Celts of Aryan descent. Perhaps the predilection in Druidism for the demonic was a perjoration of traditional Afrikan ancestor veneration. Unlike in traditional Afrikan ancestor veneration, the Celts seemed to be preoccupied with spirits that they were unable to identify. A ghost is nothing more than an ancestor that cannot be identified and is consequently feared. (In the Akan system if a person becomes “possessed” (goes into trance) and the forces (deity or ancestor) is not recognized or identified, it is quickly asked “what is its mission," and if a satisfactory answer in not given then the force is asked to leave and efforts are made to bring the person out of trance.) Also, the Celts were overly concerned with “witches,” which again might suggest a shift from a southern cradle to a northern cradle orientation. Oftentimes an attack on “witches” is a veiled attack on female spiritual power. Was this symptomatic of a rising misogyny among the Celts due to either Christianity or the northern cradle influence? The Samhain was a celebration of the ancestors, and was a time when they returned to the realm of the living offering advise and counsel. This is the most fundamental aspect of Afrikan spiritually; I would say ancestor veneration is a universal feature in Afrikan devotional systems. Since at one time the entire planet was populated only by Afrikans, this must be the source of ancestor veneration wherever on the planet it is found. As other races developed from the Afrikan, they slowly rejected and rebelled against the Afrikan worldview, with ancestor veneration often being the first casualty. (Pardon the pun.) The early Celts (or at least the Black ones) and Druidism were part of that legacy and therefore Samhain was as well.

DURHAM, North Carolina — Late one afternoon in March, officials unveiled a new monument at the University of the West Indies, in Cave Hill, Barbados. The ceremony featured African drumming, a historian’s lecture, a bishop’s prayer and a song performed by a school choir with the chorus, “We cry for the ancestors!” Those ancestors, 295 of whom have their names on the monument, were slaves who once lived where the campus now stands. What today is a university was once a plantation. What is now a nation was once a colony. In Barbados and throughout the Caribbean, slavery remains a vivid and potent metaphor, and a cultivated memory. Presiding over the event was *Sir Hilary Beckles*, the head of the university and a prolific historian. He and his Jamaican colleague Verene Shepherd have spurred on the recent call by the 15-member Caribbean Community for Britain, France and the Netherlands to pay an undefined amount of reparations for slavery and the slave trade. The group plans to file suit in national courts; if that fails, it will go to the International Court of Justice. Uniting the Caribbean around any kind of policy is not easy. The region is linguistically and politically fragmented, with links to former colonial powers or the United States often trumping cooperation. But with this new call, the community, known as Caricom, is tapping into one thing that all its member states have in common: the lingering effects of slavery.

Calls for reparations have a long history. As early as the 1790s, one French anti-slavery activist argued that the enslaved could easily ask not just for freedom but for repayment for generations of unpaid labor. But at the time of emancipation, the British granted not the ex-slaves but their former owners “reparation” in the form of a large financial indemnity. Haiti won its freedom 1804, but in 1825 it agreed to pay an indemnity to France in return for diplomatic recognition. The money was used to compensate French plantation owners. Today this all seems shocking. In 2001 France decreed slavery a “crime against humanity,” and the U.S. Congress formally apologized in 2008 for the “enslavement and racial segregation of African Americans.” American universities have begun to apologize for their historical links to slavery. And thanks to films like “Twelve Years a Slave,” Europe and America are being forced to confront the realities of slavery on-screen. But only reparations can reverse the long-term harm.

As *Ralph Gonsalves*, the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said, “We have to have appropriate recompense.” The claim is not, however, about compensating individuals, but their communities. And in this way, since most countries in the Caribbean are financially in debt to international banks, Caricom is making a provocative argument: It is actually Europe that owes the Caribbean. This is more than just creative accounting. When economists debate why some countries are poor and others are rich, they often focus on the cultural, political or economic structures of poor countries. But historians of the Caribbean have long argued that national inequality is a direct result of centuries of economic exploitation. The foundations for this argument go back to a 1944 book by the Trinidadian historian Eric Williams, “Capitalism and Slavery.” Mr. Williams had to pay $500 to help subsidize its publication by the University of North Carolina Press, but the book became a classic, and he later became his country’s prime minister. His argument, that the profits from the slave trade and slavery were the foundation for Britain’s Industrial Revolution, spurred decades of debate and research, and today there are hundreds of books documenting slavery’s profound impact on the modern world. But knowing is one thing; figuring out what to do is another. Consider this: In 2003, Haiti’s president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, called on France to repay the 1825 indemnity, which he blamed for his country’s poverty. The argument was historically sound: to pay France, Haiti had had to borrow money from French banks, entering a century-long cycle of debt. But a French commission concluded that, while there was a responsibility on France’s part, financial reparation was not the solution. Its report suggested that French aid to Haiti was a kind of “reparation” and urged more of it. After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, President Nicolas Sarkozy offered an aid and debt-forgiveness package to the country. But the French government never officially apologized, let alone offered compensation. Despite the rightness of the Caribbean nations’ claim, European governments are likely to respond similarly this time.

If Caricom accepts this approach, the call for reparations may ultimately just come to play a strategic role within international negotiations over aid and trade. Perhaps, though, something more will come of this. In the United States, calls for reparation have long served mostly as a catalyst for debate. One good way to make the point that something is important, after all, is to attach a monetary value to it. That goes for history, too. Scholars have worked for decades to educate people through their writing and teaching. Now their arguments will be heard in court, and perhaps find their way into headlines. Just as important, the discussions around reparations — in the Caribbean as in Europe — might become an occasion to delve into history, to mourn but also confront the many ways in which the past continues to shape the present.

What would it mean to truly rid our world of the legacies of slavery? In the Caribbean, it would mean undoing the divisions created by colonialism, through regional economic cooperation and reduced dependence on foreign aid and foreign banks. It would mean, above all, ending the continuing mistreatment and stereotyping of Haitians, who were the pioneers in the overthrow of slavery and have been paying for it ever since. In Europe and the United States, it would mean abandoning condescending visions of the Caribbean and building policies on aid, trade and immigration based on an acceptance of common and connected histories. It would mean, above all, consigning racial discrimination, exploitation and political exclusion to the past. That would be the truest form of reparation.

/Laurent Dubois, a professor of romance studies and history at Duke, is the author of “Haiti: The Aftershocks of History.”/

Over the past twenty-five years I have had various exchanges, some quite useful and productive, with Henry Louis Gates. We have shared a couple of public meetings and dinners during conferences, book signings, and the like. However, we have rarely agreed on Black Studies, Black History, Afrocentricity, Black Nationalism, or the slave trade. The recent essay on slavery and reparations in the New York Times (April 23, 2010) caused me to reflect on my previous critiques of several of Gates projects such as Encarta Africana, documentaries, and Wonders of the African World. Gates is a combative, assertive, and quite active intellectual. He is not a do-nothing or say-nothing person that would, given his opinions, be a good thing. Since that is not the case it is necessary to dismantle the superstructure Gates has created to defend the European’s gross violation of African humanity. Attacking the factual errors of Gates’ essay is essential for the plinths upon which the reparations argument stands. First, we must get the terms of the argument straight. There is no African Slave Trade, no Transatlantic Slave Trade; there is only European Slave Trade across the ocean as there is the Arab Slave Trade across the desert. I say European Slave Trade because the motive for kidnapping and transporting Africans across the ocean was a European initiative. Gates attempts to show Africans as being equally culpable with Europeans in the enslaving of Africans in order to argue in his narrative superstructure that it is difficult to say who should pay reparations. It is not difficult at all. One only has to ask the questions, “Who traveled to Africa in search of captives?” “Who created an entire industry of shipbuilding, insurance, outfitting of crews and ships, and banking based on the slave trade?” “Who benefited enormously from the evil and vile project of human kidnapping?” “What countries held the asiento from the Catholic Church and the King of Spain for regions of Africa used exclusively for capturing Africans?” There are some fundamental facts. First, no African kingdom used slavery as its principal mode of production. Africa has produced no economies based on slavery. It was left to Europe to create a system of slavery where humans were chattel to be used as tools in the development of wealth. Secondly, in all massive enterprises where there are oppressors and the oppressed there will be collaborators. It is no secret that some of Africa’s best minds, Fanon, Memni, Karenga, have isolated incidents of collaboration among victims of oppression. Blacks were police officers in the white minority regime of South Africa but one cannot blame apartheid on black people. So when Gates claims that Africans were involved in the slave trade one can accept this, but what one cannot accept is that Africans were equally culpable for the slave trade. Nor should one blame the Judenrats (Jewish Councils) of Germany for Nazi atrocities although they often collaborated with the Germans. Indians collaborated with the British colonialists in India and some Chinese collaborated with the Japanese in occupied China, and while there is no excuse there is certainly explanation for collaboration. Collaboration is often the results of personal ambition, greed, or force. After the Portuguese kidnapped scores of Africans in 1444 and took them to Lisbon, the process of capturing Africans from isolated villages was perfected. With overpowering force, as when the Portuguese in l482, destroyed the main capital of Nana Kwame Ansah, whites started to use other Africans to assist with their agenda. By the time Columbus opened up the Americas for Europe in l492 the Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, French, Danish, and English were poised to use every device possible to entrap Africans. Like now, one way to gain access to the masses is through people who look like they are the same as the masses. There are and will be collaborators in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gates extends his reasoning in a distortion of fact. For example, he says that the whites did not go into the interior of Africa but this flies in the face of the facts. Perhaps whites did not enter the interior regions in massive numbers but almost every African nation that experienced the slave trade has evidence of white incursions and even some settlements in the interior during the period of the slave trade. Of course, it is true that some of this evidence is found in cemeteries littered in villages in the interior, such as the cemetery in Tafo, Akyem, in Ghana. So many whites died in the interior that it was called “the white man’s grave.” Regardless to how unfortunate Gates’ essay is for scholarship and reason, there is something useful in it. The essay has refocused the attention of writers and scholars to the attempt to revise the collective text of the European world. Guilt is taken off of Europe for the slave trade and placed on black people. In fact, Gates sees blacks and whites as equally responsible for the slave trade. This is like blaming a battered woman for her own beatings. Gates is telling us that whites are saying, “You Africans made me do it.” What is useful is that Afrocentrists and Pan Africanists are now clearer about the dangers to our future than ever before. Those rooming in the so-called master’s house are in serious psychological crisis; our task is to make plain the truth and to defend African interests. The arguments made by Henry Louis Gates remind me of the Texas Textbook Commission’s attempt to change history texts because they do not fit with its conservative views. Gates gives four examples of African kings or queens who participated with the Europeans in the process of capturing Africans. These examples are puny in the context of centuries of raids, wars, and battles in the African interior as well as on the coasts of Africa. Here is what Gates wrote, “There is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played. And that role, it turns out, was a considerable one, especially for the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa. These included the Akan of the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana, the Fon of Dahomey (now Benin), the Mbundu of Ndongo in modern Angola and the Kongo of today’s Congo.” This entire statement is misleading. There has been little discussion of the role Africans played in slave- trading because the role of the collaborators was minor vis-à-vis the role of white slave raiders. The examples given of the Asante, the Fon, the Mbundu, and the Kongo are not evidence of a general support of the slave trade by African kings or queens; these are merely aberrations where they occur, not a universal pattern of African collaboration over a three hundred year period. Take the example given about the Asante. The Europeans met the Akan people in the 15th century yet there is no indication of Asante involvement in the slave trade during the 15th, l6th, and l7th, centuries and the examples given from the 18th and l9th centuries disregard the Asante attempt to prevent the European take-over of the interior. Indeed, Asante’s involvement was at the level of seeking to control the slave routes and to prevent the British from disrupting their kingdom. Gates’ own Encarta Africana claims that Nzinga, a queen of the Mbundu in the kingdom of Ndongo, was “a leading opponent of Portuguese colonialism.” In fact, from 1639 to 1648 her armies attacked the Portuguese and forced them out of the interior and back into fortresses along the coast. She retired to the royal city of Matamba in l656. In the 16th century when the Mani-kongo, called Affonso by the Portuguese, discovered that his trade with Portuguese was not based on mutual respect and that he would not be able to get the shipbuilders, teachers, and skilled craftspeople he desired from Portugal because the Portuguese wanted to make his people slaves, including his ministers. Thus, in l526, the Mani-Kongo attacked the Portuguese after sending a letter to King John III saying “You should here neither merchants nor wares because it is our will that in the kingdom of the Kongo there should not be any slaves nor market for slaves.” Therefore, Asante, Ndongo, and Kongo have been flipped by this revisionist view espoused by Henry Louis Gates and others who would like to blame slavery on Africans. The kingdom of Dahomey was involved with the D’Souza dynasty in its vile and horrendous promotion of the slave trade from Dahomey to Brazil for scores of years. but the corrupt, venal leaders of Dahomey during their collaboration with the Portuguese family is nothing more than an aberration. This is why the “selling” of “disposable captives of warfare” became a part of the rhetoric of Africans involved in the slave trade. Remember Africans were stolen from more than 100 ethnic groups, not just from the Fon of Dahomey, and the resistance of Africans, as recorded in my book, The History of Africa, far overwhelms the vile example of Dahomey. I offer these ideas in the spirit of a corrective on a corrosive essay but have little confidence that those who are anti-Africa and anti-African will learn anything. Molefi Kete Asante is the author of The History of Africa and 70 additional books on African and African American history.

While still a Senator, Obama made a speech at Hampton University's annual Ministers' Conference. His speech was on the "quiet riots" of disadvantaged communities. He stated:They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better. You tell yourself, my school will always be second rate. You tell yourself, there will never be a good job waiting for me to excel at. You tell yourself, I will never be able to afford a place that I can be proud of and call my home. That despair quietly simmers and makes it impossible to build strong communities and neighborhoods. And then one afternoon a jury says, "Not guilty" -- or a hurricane hits New Orleans -- and that despair is revealed for the world to see. In 2010, President Obama regarding HBCUs stated: We also want to keep strengthening HBCUs, which is why we're investing $850 million in these institutions over the next 10 years. And as I said in February, strengthening your institutions isn't just a task for our advisory board or for the Department of Education; it's a job for the entire federal government. And I expect all agencies to support this mission.However, by policy and appointment, President Obama has demonstrated a low priority for historically black colleges and universities and today, presidents and advocates at HBCUs are quietly expressing outrage with the Obama administration. In the last two years alone federal grant funding to HBCUs has decreased by more than $300 million.

Thus far the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities is failing. And the problem is not that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has refused to take up the president’s budget, which has 228 million in funding for HBCUs. The problem is the federal government. The Obama administration, without consulting or notifying HBCUs changed the requirement for the PLUS Loans, making thousands of Black parents ineligible for the popular loan program due to the new credit criteria imposed by the Department of Education. This has dramatically decreased student enrollment at many of the 106 HBCUs and consequently decreased their funding. Earlier this year, relations between the Obama administration and the HBCUs deteriorated to the point that several college presidents were floating around the idea of suing the administration.

Dr. Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll are at it again. This time it's Designer Babies!!!

Designer Babies

By now everyone is aware of Monsanto, the American multinational corporation that produces Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) for human consumption. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are plants or animals that have been genetically engineered with DNA from bacteria, viruses or other plants and animals. Monsanto is the developer of both the world's most popular herbicide Roundup and a suite of crops that are genetically altered to withstand being sprayed with their herbicide. Monsanto's biotech crops, including corn, soybeans, canola and sugarbeets, are planted on millions of acres in the U.S. annually. Many farmers like using their seeds because they can spray Roundup weed killer directly on the crops to kill weeds in the fields without harming the crops, and also because they believe the crops produced from the harvest are safe for human consumption. Whether you like it or not, you are eating genetically manipulated food without your consent. Presently GM ingredients do not have to be listed on labels. But more importantly, though GRAS by the FDA, recent studies have indicated a number of health problems and diseases, including Parkinson's, infertility and cancers linked to GMOs. Scientists in 2001, announced the successful birth of the world’s first genetically engineered babies—30 in total. The children were created using genes from three individuals--2 women and one man—a process referred to as ooplasmic transplantation, in which genes from a female donor are inserted into another woman’s eggs before being fertilized with a man’s sperm. The long term effects of such a procedure are unknown, but surmising from what is happening in the present cases of genetic engineering, we should be scared! Even in the 2001 study, just two years after its released, its follow-up reports problems with the in facts were already being encountered in the genetically engineered babies. According to one such report: “A frank follow-up of ooplasmic transplantation pregnancies and infants reports that two out of 17 fetuses had an abnormal 45, XO karyotype. The authors assume the hypothesis of a link between chromosomal anomalies and oocytes manipulation, and reveal that one of the babies has been diagnosed at 18 months with Pervasive Developmental Disorder, a spectrum of autism-related diagnoses." These issues have not deterred genetic scientists. And the "industry" is moving ahead as a market is developing for the reality of “designer babies”—children born with traits predetermined by the parents’ choice. Sounds like eugenics to me. Recently a US patent has been filed for a DNA testing database, which would be used by prospective parents to find out which traits their future offspring might inherit. According to a BBC article:“23andMe says its Family Traits Inheritor Calculator can predict the risk of inheriting specific diseases as well as details such as height, weight, eye color and even personality. Couples send the firm a saliva sample to see what their babies might be like.... But critics remain concerned that such technology could be misused. 'It would be highly irresponsible for 23andMe or anyone else to offer a product or service based on this patent,' said Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society... ‘We believe the patent office made a serious mistake in allowing a patent that includes drop-down menus for which to choose a future child's traits.’” Should genetic engineering and designing of humans continue unchecked, is the potential for a patent war; meaning these genetically engineered humans could become patentable property. Biotech companies have already secured patents on everything from genetically modified seeds to engineered animals of various kinds. Moreover, as of 2005, nearly 20 percent of human genes were already patented, and are explicitly claimed as intellectual property by one company or another. Might one day a mega-company if unchecked be powerful enough and protected by US law to claiming patent rights on an entire individual? The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has sued the US Patent and Trademark Office to stop the practice of issuing patents that are contrary to the law—which states that only inventions can be patented; not naturally-occurring parts of the human body. As explained by the ACLU:“For example, Myriad Genetics, a private biotechnology company based in Utah, controls patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes [two genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer]. Because of its patents, Myriad has the right to prevent anyone else from testing, studying, or even looking at these genes. It also holds the exclusive rights to any mutations along those genes. No one is allowed to do anything with the BRCA genes without Myriad's permission.” Fortunately, on June 13 this year, the US Supreme Court unanimously invalidated the patents on BRCA 1 and BRCA 2—an important victory in the fight to reclaim our genes. But Dr. Frankenstein is still out there, even if the monster has been silence--for now!

The Michael Dunn trial has been rescheduled to early 2014. It was originally scheduled for Sept 23, 2013. Dunn is the white man charged with murdering a black youth, high school student Jordan Davis, in a dispute over loud music outside a Jacksonville, Florida gas station last November. Davis died almost immediately and Dunn has been charged with first degree murder. He is currently in prison awaiting trial. Dunn, 46, believes he acted in self-defense that night last November, when he shot eight or nine bullets into the car after the altercation escalated. He claims he shot after thinking he saw a gun in the SUV that Davis and other friends were in, but police said no weapon was found in or around the vehicle. Dunn's attorney asked for a continuance in the case and it was unopposed by the state attorney's office. Defense attorney Cory Strolla said he has to interview about 100 witnesses to get ready for the trial. No trial date was set, but it was not expected to take place until January or early February. Davis' parents, who have attended the pretrial hearings, say it is never easy to see Dunn's face. "You want to some compassion, even for the person who shot your child, you want to have a little compassion for him and his family, but it's very hard to do that when he has no remorse," said Ron Davis, Jordan's father. In the time he has spent behind bars, Dunn has written several incendiary letters to family members and friends. According to News4Jax, Dunn has written over 100 letters, which an attorney for the Davis family called “shockingly racist.” In a letter addressed to his “baby” Dunn wrote: The fear is that we may get a predominately black jury and therefore, unlikely to get a favorable verdict. Sad, but that’s where this country is still at. The good news is that the surrounding counties are predominately white and Republican and supporters of gun rights.” “I was thinking an easy way to die would be to ask a car load of thugs to turn their stereo down!” he wrote in another letter, referencing the friends that were in the car with Davis. According to the Huffington Post, Dunn wrote the following statement in a letter addressed to his grandmother: “The jail is full of blacks and they all act like thugs. This may sound a bit radical but if more people would arm themselves and kill these (expletive) idiots, when they’re threatening you, eventually they may take the hint and change their behavior.” In another letter he said: “I’m really not prejudiced against race, but I have no use for certain cultures. This gangster-rap, ghetto talking thug ‘culture’ that certain segments of society flock to is intolerable. They espouse violence and disrespect towards women. The black community here in Jacksonville is in an uproar against me — the three other thugs that were in the car are telling stories to cover up their true “colors.” Upon discovery of these letters, Attorney John Phillips, who represents Davis’ parents, told Jacksonville.com: “I don’t stutter very often, but I’m almost speechless. I’ve never seen such racist ignorance in my life.”

In my studies I have come across various correspondences of the Hindu Chakras with the Kemetic deities. I specifically say Hindu became the ideas of chakras is most associated with them, and they have established that there are seven. The Chinese, on the other hand, only identify three of these energy centers, that they call Tan Tiens. The idea that the body have inner energy centers or vortexes predates both the Hindus and the Chinese. and the Chakras. According and R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, the parts of the body were in a general way consecrated to one of the Neters (deities), or divine principles — meaning that the function symbolized by the Neter is corporified in that part of the body. In the Temple at Luxor, de Lubicz found what appeared to be the only hieratic monument which effectively represented an architectural figuration of man, and which includes such esoteric knowledge as the location of the ductless glands, called the Aritu in medu netcher. The work of Isha de Lubicz’ confirms the above interpretation. Djed, which means “column,” was associated with the spine of Ausar. Isha de Lubicz informs us that in Kemet, the fire of the spinal cord was the evolutionary element in the human being. The awakening of this fire, asleep at the base of the sacrum, and its passage through the different centers of the body were part of the practical initiation into the acquisition of human mastery . . . the energy ner, active fire of the world, is specialized in man’s marrow as sa, his vitality. A man who succeeds in becoming aware of it can augment and use it at will. Moreover, we discovered from Isha de Lubicz that the raising of Sa through the spinal or djed column awakened the fire of life, which once it reaches the head and particularly the pineal gland, symbolized by the ureaus serpent, enabled the human being to develop insight. She relates that the third eye (or the eye of Heru) ”. . . masters the neters . . . and rules their blind powers.” Thus, Sa opens the pineal gland, which is identified with the destiny soul and thereby gives one influence over the deities. Now how does all this relate to the Kemetic deities and the so-called chakras or aritus. It was another aspect to the mythology of the cultural hero exists. A deeper, more esoteric level. Afrikan cultures identify an internal energy that has an orbit within the body. This energy exists beyond the souls. The San called it n/um, but other Afrikan societies, for example, the Dogon, call it nyama. N/um moves up the spine until it reaches the head. Once in the head it allows one to heal and have spiritual insight. After the Kia dance, n/um returns to the abdomen where it resides. In Kemet they called this energy Sa. Sa is the Ba (breath) internalized and vitalized by the essence of blood. It represents the vital essence of the Creator, Ra, internalized in the human being. Sa is the energy within the body that revived Ausar and allowed him spiritually to impregnate Auset with Heru. In other words, the astral soul and the ancestral soul, kindled by the internal fire of Sa, gives birth to the destiny soul. This spiritual birth is asexual or sexless since it occurs within the self/person. (Asexual reproduction of the divine-person also allows for the association of the human being with vegetal life, i.e., trees.) This sexless conception and birth are another variation on the immaculate conception and the virgin birth. The astral and ancestral souls engage in the immaculate conception, while the destiny soul experiences the virgin birth. According to Kemetic mythology Auset is the symbol of motherhood. She is also a symbol of the double or astral soul/body, which attaches to the body at the umbilical plexus, where Sa resides. As Sa makes its orbit up the spine and then down the front of the body, the Kemeyu liken its movement to the orbit of Ra (the sun). The Ba (breath) stirred by emotions and desire, both qualities of the astral body, causes Sa (vital essence) to move from the umbilical plexus and pancreas gland (the seat or throne of Auset) to the gonads (Het-Heru). Sa then passes through the gonads and up the spine to the crown plexus. The spinal column and the crown plexus both correspond to the djed column (Ausar). When Sa reaches the pineal gland (the eye of Heru), it gives “birth” to the spiritually mature person. Although the pineal gland is the eye of Heru, Tehuti provides the insight received through this “third eye.” This internal process enables the initiate to integrate the souls, awaken- ing Heru, the fully functioning pituitary gland, giving birth to the KRST. These ideas represent another level of the Ausarian Drama.

On September 23, 2013, the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic ruled that the children of “irregular” migrants born in the Dominican Republic after June 21st, 1929 would be stripped of their Dominican citizenship. The ruling – which could render 250,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent stateless – came as a result of a challenge by Juliana Deguis Pierre [6] against the Dominican Electoral Board. The Electoral Board refused to issue Pierre an identification card. They argued that although she was born in the “national territory,” because she was the daughter of migrants in transit she did not have the right to Dominican citizenship. They based their ruling on article 11.1 of the Dominican Constitution of November 29, 1966 which held sway when Pierre was born. While Ms. Pierre was the subject of the Constitutional Court’s ruling, it also targets all Dominicans of Haitian descent. The decision also formalizes a process of exclusion, racism, and harassment that had already construed Dominicans of Haitian descent as second-class citizens in their own country while marginalizing Haitian immigrants.

Indeed, even before the ruling, Haitian immigrants had been subject to demeaning raids and dragnets by the Dominican security forces while in the past thirteen months, since August 16, 2012, almost 47,700 undocumented Haitians were expelled from the country [7] – more than twice the figure of 20,541 expelled during the previous year.

The actions of the Dominican Constitutional Court also have their origins in the current of antihaitianismo – of anti- Haitianism – dating from the nineteenth century. This antihaitianismo sees the presence of people of Haitian descent– and of people of African descent more generally – as a threat to Dominican identity. It relies on both an identification with Spanish roots and the valorization of an aboriginal or indio [8] past through the national cult of Quisqueya. It contrasts the Dominican Republic’s whiteness with Haiti’s Blackness; as one scholar memorably put it, “in the Dominican Republic the cause is the consequence: you are Black because you are Haitian, [9] you are Haitian because you are Black.”

Yet while Blackness is rejected from Dominican identity, it is necessary for the Dominican economy. The four generations of Dominicans of Haitian descent that would be denationalized by the ruling are the children of Haitian cane-cutters who toiled in Dominican sugar plantations under conditions reminiscent of slavery. Thee importance of the Haitian market to Dominican commerce should also be noted. The trade imbalance [10] between the two countries is stark. In 2012, the Dominican Republic exported more than $1.7 billion worth of goods through formal and informal channels. Haiti sent back just $50 million in goods.

The most notorious result of anti-Haitianism came in the form of the so-called Parsley Massacre in 1937, overseen by Dominican President Rafael Trujillo with the complicity of Haitian president Elie Lescot. Between 2 October 1937 and 8 October 1937, between 14,000 and 40,000 Haitians were slaughtered by Dominican troops. The current ruling by the Dominican Constitutional Courts triggers the potential denationalization and displacement of tens of thousands of Dominicans while providing the ideological grounds for the recurrence of such dehumanizing violence against Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent. The massacre could happen again.

In response to the ruling, there have been protests by enlightened Dominicans in Washington Heights [11] and San Juan, Puerto Rico [12] while Haitian and Dominican civil society organizations [13] have issued statements condemning [14] the decision. One can only hope these protests spread. The late Dominican-Haitian activist Sonia Pierre [15] once stated, “My community, the community of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, is the poorest and most vulnerable, subject to the cruelest denial of their rights.” Until the law is repealed, until Dominicans of Haitian descent have a secure and meaningful path to citizenship, and until their human rights are recognized and protected, they will remain the most vulnerable, victimized and preyed upon by a racist Dominican state.

SpainStarting in 1492, Spain was the first European country to colonize the New World, where they established an economic monopoly in the territories of Florida and other parts of North America, Mexico, Trinidad, Cuba and other Caribbean islands. The native populations of these colonies were mostly dying from disease or enslavement, so the Spanish were forced to increasingly rely on African slave labor to run their colonies. The money generated from these settlements created great wealth for the Hapsburg and Bourbon dynasties throughout Spain’s hold on the area. But it also attracted Spain’s European rivals, prompting Spanish rulers to spend the riches from the Americas to fuel successive European wars. Spanish treasure fleets were used to protect the cargo transported across the Atlantic Ocean. The ships’ cargo included lumber, manufactured goods, various metal resources and expensive luxury goods including silver, gold, gems, pearls, spices, sugar, tobacco leaf and silk. Port cities in Spain flourished. Seville, which had a royal monopoly on New World trade, was transformed from a provincial port into a major city and political center. Since the Spanish colonists were not yet producing their own staples such as wine, oil, flour, arms and leather, and had large financial reserves to pay for them, prices in Castile and Andalusia rose sharply as traders bought up goods to ship out. Prices of oil, wine and wheat tripled between 1511 and 1539. The great vineyards of Jerez, the olive groves of Jaén, and the arms and leather industry of Toledo were established on their present scale during these years.

Old slave gold mining town Minas Gerais in Brazil

PortugalPortugal was the first of all European countries to become involved in the Atlantic slave trade. From the 15th to 19th century, the Portuguese exported 4.5 million Africans as slaves to the Americas, making it Europe’s largest trafficker of human beings. Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Portugal’s colony of Brazil, and sugar was the primary export from 1600 to 1650. Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in 1690, which sparked an increase in the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market. The large portion of the Brazilian inland where gold was extracted was known as the Minas Gerais (General Mines). Gold mining in this area became the main economic activity of colonial Brazil during the 18th century. In Portugal, the gold was mainly used to pay for industrialized goods such as textiles and weapons, and to build magnificent baroque monuments like the Convent of Mafra.

Dutch riches from enslaved labor used to build canals in Amsterdam

NetherlandsThe Dutch West India Company, a chartered company of Dutch merchants, was established in 1621 as a monopoly over the African slave trade to Brazil, the Caribbean and North America. WIC had offices in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hoorn, Middelburg and Groningen, but one-fourth of Africans transported across the Atlantic by the company were moved in slave ships from Amsterdam. Almost all of the money that financed slave plantations in Suriname and the Antilles came from bankers in Amsterdam, just as many of the ships used to transport slaves were built there. Many of the raw materials that were turned into finished goods in Amsterdam, such as sugar and coffee, were grown in the colonies using slave labor and then refined in factories in the Jordaan neighborhood. Revenue from the goods produced with slave labor funded much of The Netherlands’ golden age in the 17th century, a period renowned for its artistic, literary, scientific, and philosophical achievements. Slave labor created vast sources of wealth for the Dutch in the form of precious metals, sugar, tobacco, cocoa, coffee and cotton and other goods, and helped to fund the creation of Amsterdam’s beautiful and famous canals and city center.

France Larochelle slave port

FranceWith over 1,600,000 enslaved Africans transported to the West Indies, France was clearly a major player in the trade. Its slave ports were a major contributor to the country’s economic advancements in the 18th century. Many of its cities on the west coast, such as Nantes, Lorient, La Rochelle, and Bordeaux, built their wealth through the major profits of triangular slave trade. Between 1738 and 1745, from Nantes, France’s leading slave port, 55,000 slaves were taken to the New World in 180 ships. From 1713 to 1775, nearly 800 vessels in the slave trade sailed from Nantes. By the late 1780s, French Saint Domingue, which is modern-day Haiti, became the richest and most prosperous colony in the West Indies, cementing its status as a vital port in the Americas for goods and products flowing to and from France and Europe. The income and taxes from slave-based sugar production became a major source of the French national budget. Each year over 600 vessels visited the ports of Haiti to carry its sugar, coffee, cotton, indigo, and cacao to European consumers.

Bank of London gold vaults

EnglandBetween 1761 and 1808, British traders hauled 1,428,000 African captives across the Atlantic and pocketed $96.5 million – about $13 billion in value today – from selling them as slaves. From 1500 to 1860, by very modest estimations, around 12 million Afrikans were traded into slavery in the Americas. In British vessels alone, 3.25 million Africans were shipped. These voyages were often very profitable. For instance, in the 17th century, the Royal Africa Company could buy an enslaved African with trade goods worth $5 and sell that person in the Americas for $32, making an average net profit of 38 percent per voyage. Slave-owning planters and merchants who dealt in slaves and slave produce were among the richest people in 18th-century Britain, but many other British citizens benefited from the human trafficking industry. Profits from slavery were used to endow All Souls College, Oxford, with a splendid library; to build a score of banks, including the Bank of London and Barclays; and to finance the experiments of James Watt, inventor of the first efficient steam engine. As the primary catalyst for the Industrial Revolution, the transatlantic slave trade provided factory owners who dealt in textiles, iron, glass and gun-making a mega-market in West Africa, where their goods were traded for slaves. Birmingham had over 4,000 gun-makers, with 100,000 guns a year going to slave-traders. The boom in manufacturing provided many jobs for ordinary people in Britain who, in addition to working in factories, could be employed to build roads and bridges, and in whaling, mining, etc.

An opulent southern plantation, the Longwood

The United States of AmericaSlavery transformed America into an economic power. The exploitation of black people for free labor made the South the richest and most politically powerful region in the country. British demand for American cotton made the southern stretch of the Mississippi River the Silicon Valley of its era, boasting the single largest concentration of the nation’s millionaires. But slavery was a national enterprise. Many firms on Wall Street such as JPMorgan Chase, New York Life and now-defunct Lehman Brothers made fortunes from investing in the slave trade the most profitable economic activity in New York’s 350 year history. Slavery was so important to the city that New York was one of the most pro-slavery urban municipalities in the North. According to Harper’s magazine (November 2000), the United States stole an estimated $100 trillion for 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865, with a compounded interest of 6 percent.

The interesting thing about the data below is it shows that Americans of Afrikan heritage are the second largest group in the US, and not the cultural grouping called "Latinos" which by the way contained large numbers of Afrikan-descended people anyway. The map also does not show the Afrikan population of NYC, which has more Afrikan-descended people than any other US city.

The map that shows where America came from: Fascinating illustration shows the ancestry of EVERY county in the US

Census data shows heritage of 317 million modern Americans

Clusters show where immigrants from different nations chose to settle

Largest ancestry grouping in the nation are of German descent with almost 50 million people

African American or Black is the second largest grouping with just over 40 million people

Almost 20 million people claim to have 'American' ancestry for political reasons and because they are unsure of their family's genealogy

49,206,934 Germans By far the largest ancestral group, stretching from coast to coast across 21st century America is German, with 49,206,934 people. The peak immigration for Germans was in the mid-19th century as thousands were driven from their homes by unemployment and unrest.

The majority of German-Americans can now be found in the the center of the nation, with the majority living in Maricopa County, Arizona and according to Business Insider, famous German-Americans include, Ben Affleck, Tom Cruise, Walt Disney, Henry J. Heinz and Oscar Mayer.

Indeed, despite having no successful New World colonies, the first significant groups of German immigrants arrived in the United States in the 1670s and settled in New York and Pennsylvania.

Germans were attracted to America for familiar reasons, open tracts of land and religious freedom and their contributions to the nation included establishing the first kindergartens, Christmas trees and hot dogs and hamburgers.

41,284,752 Black or African AmericansThe census map also identifies, Black or African-American as a term for citizens of the United States who have ancestry in Sub-Saharan Africa.The majority of African Americans are descended from slaves from West and Central Africa and of course have become an integral part of the story of the United States, gaining the right to vote with the 15th amendment in 1870, but struggling with their civil rights for at least another century.Predominantly living in the south of the nation where they were brought to work on the cotton plantations and as slaves in the late 18th to mid-19th centuries, Black or African Americans also have sizable communities in the Chicago area of Illinois and Detroit, Michigan.35,523,082 IrishAnother group who joined the great story of the United States were the Irish and the great famine of the 1840s sparked mass migration from Ireland.

It is estimated that between 1820 and 1920, 4.5 million Irish moved to the United States and settled in the large cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco.Currently, almost 12 percent of the total population of the United States claim Irish ancestry - compared with a total population of six and a half million for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland today.

Irish residents of note include John F. Kennedy, Derek Jeter and Neil Armstrong and 35,523,082 people call themselves Irish.31,789,483 Mexican

And from 1990 to 2000, the number of people who claimed Mexican ancestry almost doubled in size to 31,789,483 people.

Those with Mexican ancestry are most common along the Southwestern border of the United States and is largest ancestry in Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, San Diego, Dallas and San Antonio.(In many states, the Hispanic population doubled between the 2000 and 2010 census. In New Mexico, Hispanics outstripped whites for the first time, reaching 46 per cent compared to 40 per cent.)26,923,091 English The next largest grouping of people in the United States by ancestry are those who claim to be English-American.

Predominantly found in the Northwest and West, the number of people directly claiming to be English-American has dropped by 20 million since the 1980 U.S. Census because more citizens have started to identify themselves as American.They are based predominantly in the northeast of the country in New England and in Utah, where the majority of Mormon immigrants moved in the middle 19th century.

Notable American people with English ancestry are Orson Welles and Bill Gates and 26,923,091 people claim to come from the land of the original Pilgrims.19,911,467 AmericansThe surprising number of people across the nation claiming to have American ancestry is due to them making a political statement, or because they are simply uncertain about their direct descendants. Indeed, this is a particularly common feature in the south of the nation, where political tensions between those who consider themselves original settlers and those who are more recent exist.17,558,598 ItalianOne of the most influential nationalities to migrate in large numbers to the United States were the Italians.Between 1880 and 1920, more than 4 million Italian immigrants arrived in the United States forming 'Little Italies' wherever they went.

Bringing their food, culture and entertainment to the nation, another large wave of Italian immigrants arrived in the country following WWII, bringing the total number today to 17,558,598 people.9,739,653 Polish

The largest of the Slavic groups to live in the United States, Polish Americans were some of the earliest Eastern European colonists to the New World.

Up to 2.5 million Polies came to the United States between the mid-19th century and World War 1 and flocked to the largest industrial cities of New York, Buffalo, Cleveland, Milwaukee and Chicago.

9,136,092 French Historically, along with the English, the French colonized North America first and successfully in the North East in the border areas alongside Quebec and in the south around New Orleans and Louisiana.